Sale Haul - Part 3 - Accessorize - Z For Accessorize And More

Accessorize is without a doubt one of my favourite shops on the high street. I do find it a little bit overpriced so I don't tend to shop there as often as I would like but it's way up there on my fantasy trolley dash list. One of the best things about sales is that they can give you the opportunity to buy things that you really, really want for a cheaper price and that's exactly what happened in this case.

A few month ago now Accessorize launched a collaboration with jewellery designer and daughter of the Monsoon and Accessorize founder Peter Simon, Zara Simon. The range Z For Accessorize features a wide variety of hand crafted, gold plated jewellery pieces, some of which contain crystals and semi precious gemstones. For me it was love at first sight and ever since the launch I've lusted after the entire collection.

As soon as the Christmas shipping deadline passed I started stalking the site, with my fingers tightly crossed that at least one or two pieces would make it into the sale, I was in luck most of the items that I wanted did appear in the sale, and whilst some of the discounts weren't huge, they made it easier for me to justify buying as many items as I did.

The majority of items I ordered were from the Aura range just a slightly irregular, circular faceted gemstone set in a gold plated setting. The first set of items that I bought all featured the amazing off white, slightly opaque gemstone that is Moonstone. The first item that I got was the Aura Precious Stone Necklace. Mummy Lou stepped in to model it for me because I couldn't trust her to take the pictures :)

She's more of a long chain fan so she found this one a little bit too short but I don't mind it I love dainty necklaces and if you wanted you could also layer this one up with a longer gold chain or even one with another pendant. I paid £7.50 for this necklace and whilst it's no longer available in this stone, you can get it a translucent, green shade for £15

I'm not usually a matchy, matchy person but I decided to go for a matching set and get the Aura Precious Stone Stud Earrings in White Moonstone to match.

I love the faceting and the slightly differing tones in each stud that you only get with natural gemstones. I also love the way that these earrings and this stone shows just a hint of the natural skin colour beneath. My only issue with these is how tight the butterflies were I'll definitely by replacing them with something a little looser I actually had to cut the card to get them off! Again the lovely Mummy Lou is modelling x 

The stud earrings appear to have been discontinued which is a shame I paid £6 for these but you can get similar drop earrings in the range for around £15.

All good things come in 3's so I also got the matching Aura Precious Stone Ring in Moonstone too. Again I love the faceting and the way it plays with the light and takes on my skin tone. I have really chubby fingers so I went for the Large size in all of the rings and they fit comfortably on both of my ring fingers. I would love it if in future they did the rings in XL but I love the rings in this range so much I'm sure I'll cope.

I paid £7.50 for this ring and whilst this particular shade is no longer available you can still get the green and pink variants for £15 each.

The rings in this collection really were the thing that caught my eye so I bought another 3. First up I got the Aura Precious Stone Ring is another variant. The shape is ever so slightly different and this time the ring features a Labradorite stone. Again it's faceted and slightly translucent so it takes on the warm tones of the skin beneath.

This one was also £7.50 and yet again it's no longer available on the Accessorize website but similar rings are around £15 and the 2 other Labradorite rings they have are £17 and £25 each.

The next ring that I got is also from the Aura range but this time it's the Mini Aura Precious Stone Ring. The stone is an Aqua Chalcedony, a gorgeous pale, smoky, sea green. Again it's faceted but this time it's an almost checker board facet and the setting and shape is a lot more regular and symmetrical.

This ring was £7 and surprise, surprise it's not available on the website either. Some of the green versions of the other rings though are made using the same gemstone but they aren't quite as delicate as this one.

All of the Aura rings can also be worn stacked for a different look but keeping with the more delicate theme, my final Z For Accessorize purchase is something that I would personally wear all it's own.

The Izzy Triple Precious Stone Ring comprises of three small irregular shaped, Amethyst stones in a gold plated setting. This is a really, small, pretty and delicate ring, the complete opposite of some of the other pieces in the range. This was my most expensive purchase at £8.40 but it's so wearable and comfortable it was well worth the money. This particular ring too is long gone but the Zara ring which is £12 is very similar and uses clear, and grey smoky crystals

I am so, so pleased with all the Z For Accessorize items that I ordered. The quality is great and I just love the style. Finances permitting I will be back for more and I've already got the Isha necklace, and the Jupiter ring in my sights.

I did buy one tiny other thing and it was something that I didn't need but I couldn't resist, the Feeling Lucky Coin Purse.

I'm a cat lover, and I love the whole idea of the Maneki Neko, or lucky cat. The cute zipped coin purse is covered in chubby looking cartoon white cats and I'm really hoping it brings me a bit of luck. Like so many of the things in this haul it's no longer available but for £3.50 I think it was money well spent, even if I have a little less to put in it.

I hope you enjoyed my little Accessorize sale haul, x Thanks for reading and don't forget to enter my giveaway xx

Spending My Birthday At The DYO Fabulous Pre Launch Party

It's hard to believe that it's been a week since my birthday - I normally spend my birthday with my family but this year was a little bit different. This year I spent some of my birthday with lots of other bloggers at an official NE1 Newcastle Week Fringe Event.

I love jewellery, fashion pieces, precious metal pieces, semi precious gemstones I love it all. So when I was invited to a pre launch party for a new jewellery brand, no matter what the date I knew I needed to go.

DYO Fabulous is a local North East brand which has been four years in the making. The owner and founder Janet was always a huge jewellery fan, but she was concerned about the ethics and foundations of a lot of the jewellery that we buy on the British high street - did you know only around 10% of jewellery that buy in the UK is actually made here? that's a pretty amazing statistic to be honest it shows how much of the fashion and jewellery that we buy is mass market.

Over the last few years Janet has travelled the world looking into the jewellery industry and researching and obtaining ethical suppliers of semi precious gemstones, beads, chains, fastenings and findings, in order to make ethical, high quality and bespoke jewellery.

The event took place in Nancy's Bordello, a popular bar on the outskirts of Newcastle city centre. We had the entire upstairs room to ourselves, to drool over some of DYO Fabulous' beautiful jewellery pieces, and munch on some of French Ovens' gorgeous vanilla cupcakes.

After we'd had a little chance to look around at some of the designs and components, Janet, gave us a little talk on the history of the brand and introduced us to some her staff - including design graduates from local universities.

As well as selling high quality, individual one off pieces from their website, DYO ultimately intends to introduce us to an entirely new concept of purchasing jewellery.

DYO stands for Design Your Own and that's customers will ultimately be able to do. Using a specially designed interface on their website, users will be able to custom design their own unique piece of jewellery, to fit their own needs, and their own budgets. The interface isn't "live" yet but we were given some examples of how it works and how accurately the pieces will be produced.

I am so excited for this to launch, I think it's something that I could spend literally hours on. I really love the concept and the fact that you can create something completely unique, that nobody else has. They also plan to introduce a bridal matching service to match and create items to match bridal gowns, a section for stylists and a service where we can remodel old or broken pieces of jewellery into something new.

The more I saw and heard the more excited I got - I wanted it all - everything was just so me -  :)

Thankfully there was a little sample sale and whilst I wanted everything again I was good and purchased just one thing

This gorgeous, elasticated  bracelet is made from goldstone - a gorgeous brown / copper semi precious gemstone filled with gold sparkles - it looks amazing in the pictures above but by using the flash you can really see the sparkles. There is a similar bracelet on the DYO site at the moment if your interested x

I was also lucky enough to win a prize in their lucky dip - I was lucky enough to pull out this lovely carved rose detail bracelet, I think there is a bit of rose quartz in it, which is a stone that I love.

All in all I had a fabulous time, and I was only disappointed that I couldn't stay long enough to make my own Princess necklace. The idea and concept, and the ethics behind the brand are first class and the quality and attention to detail is fantastic. I really wish Janet and the team every success with the venture and I'd like to thank them again for the invite. I will definitely be back for more in the future x To find out more please check out the DYO Fabulous website xx